Inman awarded construction contract for $42.8M facility

Construction is about to begin on the $42.8 million College of Pharmacy building at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center campus.

Inman Construction Corp. won the contract to build the six-story facility on Madison Avenue after the state received bids at the end of August. Construction should begin on the project next month and is expected to be complete by January 2010 or as early as fall of 2009. Inman Construction is already building the Regional Biocontainment Laboratory at the UT-Baptist Research Park.

College of Pharmacy dean Dick Gourley says the building has been a long time coming.

"I became dean in December 1989 and I requested it then," he says.

Gourley has been revising plans he has sent to the state for the building's funding since 1992. The plan changed when Hurricane Katrina increased the cost of building materials, for example.

The college has "done well with what we have" for a long time, Gourley says, but the old facility is much like an old car that "you end up spending more on it than it's worth."

"Having a new facility in Memphis will make all the difference in the world as far as the recruitment and retention of faculty, and in increased efficiency," he says.

The building will give Memphis a leg up in research recruitment, too, says Memphis Medical Center director Beth Flanagan. But, she says, that the project was approved says a lot.

"This is the only university building that is completely funded by the governor's budget in the same year it was approved, not a two-thirds, one-third match," Flanagan says. "Fortunately for us, Nashville understands this is an investment in the future of Memphis, not just a building. Governor (Phil) Bredesen continues to support us not just in his speeches, but financially, too."

The new building will consolidate on four floors pharmaceutical lab work that is going on in several different buildings. The top two floors will be empty shells for future expansion. The building will also house the school's Clinical and Translational Science Center.